John Dudley: Confident putting stroke has Woods looking scary again

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You only need to leave the door open a crack for the great ones.

So this morning, thanks to a putting lesson from Steve Stricker and a still out-of-synch Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods once again looks like the scariest player in golf.

Woods' 76th career victory, coming at one of his favorite tracks at Doral, reminded us of something it's been easy to forget as he's struggled over the past two seasons to get back to pre-meltdown form.

Yes, Tiger can hit it off the tee. But when his putter is going the way it was the past four days, there's no beating him.

What's been missing, more than anything, from the new Woods is his short game, specifically, confidence in his short game.

Not anymore.

At Doral, Woods swung the putter only 100 times in four rounds, the lowest total of his career. Certainly Doral was posh, but it was rolling well for everyone, not just the guy who averaged 25 putts per round.

To put that number in perspective, in 2005 and 2006, when he won six and eight tournaments, respectively, Woods averaged 28.70 and 29.36 putts per round.

The Woods of the past few seasons often looked lost from 100 yards in. That was particularly the case on the greens.

It got so bad that in 2010 he switched putters for the first time in 10 years, swapping his Scotty Cameron for a Nike model before the British Open.

When that didn't work, he went back to the Cameron.

Turns out what was missing was the killer instinct he showed so often during his stretch of 14 major championship wins, including the must-make putt he sank to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate in the 2008 U.S. Open.

Last year at Augusta, when Woods was spraying it off the tee and really needed to save pars, his putter was mediocre. Same thing weeks later at Olympic in the U.S. Open, where he putted 123 times and never seemed to sink a big putt when he needed one.

If Woods really has turned the corner, the rest of the tour can blame Stricker, one of the game's best putters.

Watching Woods struggle at the Honda Classic last week -- where McIlroy walked off the course in disgust -- Stricker offered his old friend a tip about changing the shaft angle of his putter.

Woods promptly went out and opened with a 6-under 66 at Doral, rolling in nine birdies. Then he kept it going through the weekend.

He joked this week that he might keep Sticker on retainer this season, given that Stricker has announced he's playing a reduced schedule to spend time with his family.

In reality, all he really needs to get back to winning majors is the confidence he seemed to regain at Doral. Of course, a prolonged slump by McIlroy wouldn't hurt, either.